The daylily industry must not go down the drain just like that
Reading note: From how the dealers buy, which determines how the farmers can only sell, to the process of "e-commerce poverty alleviation," using safe and reliable e-commerce platforms to "endorse" the quality of farmers' agricultural products. Farmers in Shaodong, Hunan, starting from solving the sales channel problem in the daylily industry, are forcing the standardization and regulation of the entire production chain, thereby achieving the renewed prosperity of a rural specialty industry. Facts have proven that when the internet connects a vast market thousands of miles away with scattered and isolated production bases, a scientific management system will comprehensively upgrade the industrial system of specialty agricultural products. Please see our reporter's report from Hunan——
"Buyers of daylilies are reassured, and as a daylily producer, I feel at ease." On September 7, in Longsheng Village, Liuguangling Town, Shaodong County——a provincial-level poverty-stricken village in Hunan——impoverished household Zeng Yun'an sold the last batch of dried daylilies at 40 yuan/jin through the Anxin Youxuan online shopping platform.
The Anxin Youxuan online shopping platform paid Zeng Yun'an a purchase price of 33 yuan/jin. Why could daylilies sell at such a high price? All of this stems from the "targeted poverty alleviation, purchase instead of donation" cooperation project launched by the county's poverty alleviation office and the Anxin Youxuan online shopping platform.
Yet two years ago, Zeng Yun'an's pure dried daylilies could not be sold, while inferior and fake daylilies flourished. It was not just Zeng Yun'an——Shaodong County, long known as "China's Home of Daylilies," saw its daylilies shunned by buyers because some purchasers, driven by profit, used sulfur fumigation on the daylilies. When one suffers, all suffer, and daylily growers suffered along with it.
How to keep daylilies from "withering"? Shaodong County seized the opportunity of being selected as one of the second batch of national comprehensive demonstration counties for e-commerce entering rural areas, and mobilized An'an Lixiang Network Technology Company to take the lead in e-commerce poverty alleviation.
One platform drives the revitalization of an entire industry. Through the Anxin Youxuan online shopping platform, Shaodong applies "internet plus" thinking, leveraging high-quality demand for agricultural products to force harmless processing and pure ecological cultivation, pulling a declining traditional industry out of its trough and gradually nurturing it into a high-quality industry.
The color got "bright" but the market went "cold"
"Fifteen years ago, 100 jin of daylilies could be exchanged for 1,200 jin of rice, but two or three years ago, daylilies piled up at home and rotted, and what we got back was heartbreak." said Li Taoyun, a large-scale daylily grower in Longsheng Village.
Shaodong daylilies were once one of the famous "two flowers" of central Hunan, equally renowned as Longhui honeysuckle. More than 30 years ago, 1 ton of daylilies could be exchanged for 6.4 tons of wheat, and 5.6 tons of daylilies could be exchanged for a large automobile.
One can imagine how "hot" the daylily market was at that time. Yet from the early 21st century until 2014, the price of daylilies only fluctuated around 10 yuan/jin.
In Longsheng Village——the main daylily production area in Shaodong——village director Tan Xingwang explained that because daylilies are most afraid of "dampness," and daylily harvesting is concentrated in the annual plum rain season, once the yield is large, they cannot be sun-dried. To prevent mold, farmers would add an appropriate amount of sulfur, but usually within the national standard range, that is, sulfur dioxide added to dried daylilies not exceeding 0.2%/kg.
Tan Xingwang said the real driving force behind this was some out-of-town dealers, who after purchasing from farmers' homes, added sulfur at levels exceeding the standard by more than ten times or even dozens of times. This is because fumigated daylilies are bright and beautiful with high visual appeal, while "original" dried daylilies have a dull color and poor appearance.
With no other sales channels, farmers had no choice——however the dealers bought, that was how farmers sold. Daylilies with 80% dryness weighed 15 jin more per hundred jin than those with 95% dryness, yet the purchase price was only 1-2 yuan lower, and it saved the effort of sun-drying. Over more than a decade, a bizarre phenomenon emerged in daylily purchasing: well-dried, additive-free daylilies were hard to sell, while moisture-rich, sulfur-fumigated daylilies were actually popular.
"The color got 'bright,' but the market went 'cold'!" said villager Shen Zihua. Although at the time everyone felt they had gotten a bargain, it ruined the reputation of Shaodong daylilies, and the glory of the past was gone forever.
The platform came "alive" and sales went "hot"
"The daylily market being snubbed, on the surface, was caused by sulfur, but essentially it was due to farmers' lack of market information and poor sales channels, resulting in a disconnect between production and consumption." said Yuan Lianfang, section chief of the E-commerce Section of the Shaodong County Commerce Bureau.
In July 2015, Shaodong strived to join the ranks of the second batch of national comprehensive demonstration counties for e-commerce entering rural areas. Based on industrial distribution, Shaodong established 280 village-level e-commerce service stations. Leveraging the advantages of a new round of "internet plus agriculture," it built e-commerce platforms and created a daylily e-commerce industry chain.
The "shell" was built, but who would do the "inner work"? An'an Lixiang Network Technology Company became the first in Shaodong to "eat the crab" in professional agricultural e-commerce. The company's 33-year-old chairman Chen Ming'an told reporters that in e-commerce, especially agricultural e-commerce, product quality varies greatly, with substandard goods passed off as superior and counterfeit products long being criticized. Therefore, in 2014, he resolved to create an agricultural product e-commerce platform——"Anxin Youxuan"——to let customers consume with confidence, selecting the best of the best.
The farmers producing Shaodong daylilies were mainly impoverished households. Because when the daylily market was once bleak, most farmers chose to abandon cultivation and switch to other work, and those who struggled to hold on to daylilies were mostly impoverished households with no other options. Therefore, with the matchmaking of the Shaodong County Poverty Alleviation Office, "Anxin Youxuan" first chose to cooperate with impoverished households.
Taking Longsheng Village as an example, among the village's 210 households, 71 registered targeted poverty alleviation households almost all relied on daylily cultivation for their livelihood, with no other source of income. "Most of them are honest, simple farmers. In the past, they followed the trend of adding sulfur. As long as we guide them with market concepts and let them get tangible benefits, we can pull them back to supply additive-free daylilies." Chen Ming'an said.
The poverty alleviation department, the e-commerce platform, and the impoverished households were all willing to participate, and a new project was quickly formed: "internet plus targeted poverty alleviation plus food safety." According to Xie Xinrun, chairman of the labor union of the Shaodong County Poverty Alleviation Office, "Anxin Youxuan" formed cooperation with more than 1,000 impoverished households in 85 poverty-stricken villages across the county: the company builds a sales platform for specialty agricultural products mainly featuring daylilies; impoverished households provide the company with a safe product source.
The platform came "alive," and sales went "hot"! Since the "Anxin Youxuan" online shopping platform opened one year ago, it has sold over 21 million yuan worth of agricultural products for nearly 3,900 impoverished households and farmers in Shaodong County and even the central Hunan region, among which gift-boxed daylilies at 98 yuan/kg were sold far and wide across the country.
Quality "rose" and the brand "resounded"
High-quality market demand forced the e-commerce platform and farmers to win by quality in production and processing.
When "Anxin Youxuan" signed purchase agreements with farmers, it specified three requirements: no added sulfur, dryness of 90% or above, and no blooming daylilies and no impurities.
In the production phase, to help impoverished farmers improve cultivation techniques, "Anxin Youxuan" invited experts from the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to provide on-site guidance for cultivation, strictly controlling quality from the very start of seedling selection, conducting inspections of plots intended for seedling selection, and choosing plots with robust growth, no pests or diseases, and high variety purity as selection targets.
In the harvesting phase, emphasis was placed on timely harvesting. Every harvesting season, the Anxin Youxuan online shopping platform would send purchasers to large-scale growers' bases to monitor harvesting on site, supervising farmers to harvest before the flower buds have fully grown but not yet opened.
Processing is a crucial step. Farmers' traditional processing method was sun-drying, but villagers admitted that if good weather was not available during harvesting, they had no choice but to use artificial drying methods, and sometimes when rainy weather persisted, they had to add an appropriate amount of sulfur for fumigation. Therefore, in order to completely eliminate the addition of sulfur, "An'an Lixiang" Network Technology Company plans to cooperate with the village to invest in a 30 million yuan "steaming and drying continuous processing line" to dry the daylilies. After the processing line is completed, it can dry 50,000 jin of fresh daylilies per day.
E-commerce poverty alleviation has restored the reputation of the daylily brand, which drew great attention from Hunan's top leaders. On the afternoon of December 1, 2015, then Hunan Provincial Party Secretary Xu Shousheng experienced online shopping on "Anxin Youxuan." He clicked the mouse and spent 36.8 yuan to purchase 300 grams of daylilies.
"This kind of e-commerce poverty alleviation has achieved results and distinctive features." said Xu Shousheng, deputy director of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress. "Small commodities like daylilies also have a big market. We must use 'internet plus,' base ourselves in rural areas, serve farmers, and solve the problems of poor information flow in rural areas and agricultural products not being sellable."
Good sales pull up a healthy industry chain
"A bowl of stir-fried pork with chili, a bowl of daylily soup." This was once the favorite flavor of the people of central Hunan.
"1 ton of daylilies could be exchanged for 2.21 tons of steel." This was the most valuable industry in central Hunan households more than 30 years ago.
Farmers were willing to grow them, consumers loved to eat them, and the market favored them most, yet it was exactly these daylilies that "withered" over the past dozen years!
The daylilies "withered," and one unavoidable main factor was this: sales became "rigid," which led to quality becoming "poor," which caused the daylilies to "wither."
What can be used to save the declining daylily industry?
Behind government guidance, there must also be a market driving force. Chen Ming'an, a boss who had always made money relatively quickly doing municipal engineering, stepped forward. Besides the drive of a young entrepreneur, there was also a rural child's nostalgia for and pursuit of rural original ecological products, and even more so a vision of using e-commerce poverty alleviation to drive industrial development and help farmers escape poverty.
Shaodong is known as "Hunan's No. 1 County for Private Economy." Developing agricultural product e-commerce in a major agricultural county is no miracle, but transforming and developing agriculture in a major commercial county requires even more courage and strategy. In Chen Ming'an's view, such a strategy is actually very simple: do a good job with one word, "peace of mind" (an): only when sales are reassuring can product safety be forced into place. Thus such a miracle came about: last year on "Double Eleven," Shaodong County ranked first in Hunan for express delivery order volume, and one of the sales stars was none other than "daylilies." It can be seen that a successful e-commerce platform pulls up not only sales volume, but also a healthy and sustainably developing industry chain behind it.